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From: hak@cs.sfu.ca (Hassan Ait-Kaci)
Subject: Backtracking Blues
Message-ID: <HAK.95May18191659@chaumes.cs.sfu.ca>
Followup-To: comp.lang.prolog
Sender: news@cs.sfu.ca
Cc: life-users
Organization: School of Computing Science, Simon Fraser University
Date: 19 May 1995 02:16:59 GMT
Lines: 182
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.prolog:13009 comp.constraints:662 comp.ai:29959

Hi,

In October 1993, as I was attending ILPS'93 in Vancouver, BC. I was
"warned" by Veronica Dahl that I may be called by her to sing a song and
play some guitar. She, talented jazz singer and musician, had planned a
delightful entertainment with her musical band Solis, and others like
me, spoiled the evening placing a couple of quacks here and there.

Anyway, in the hotel that day, I was pondering the sort of song that
would touch some deep fibre in the soul of an audience consisting of a
bunch of overworked, underpaid, and depressed, Logic Programming
researchers. I immediately cam to the ineluctable conclusion: only a
lowdown blues could translate the feeling of us pour souls...  So I
wrote a song called "A.I. Gots 'Em Lo Down Backtrackin' Blues". The
point, Oeuf Corse, was to juggle with AI/LP puns, and so I spun a few,
though missed a bunch too...

I did not play it later that evening (thanks!), and forgot all about
it. But today, going through some old notes, I found the song lyrics
hurriedly jotted on Coast Plaza Hotel letterhead paper. I had a good
laugh and decided to format it and share it with the world.  Here it
is. Enjoy, or... let it wait for your garbage collector (8^(

Best,

-hak

This is a uuencoded, gzipped, PostScript file. Save this post as is in a
file (say hak.msg), then go to the directory where that file is and do
'uudecode hak.msg'. The file 'b-t-blues.ps.gz' will appear, that you
decompress with 'gunzip b-t-blues.ps.gz'. View b-t-blues.ps with a
PostScript viewer or print with lpr.

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end
--
